Ch 7, House Clean-Up

Alina Alicante couldn't hide her amusement with Pote's face when he and Teresa Mendoza walked in her apartment without waiting for her to invite them.

"I need you to tell me all you know about the smuggling that takes place on my property!" Teresa felt her voice and face freeze just at the sight of the other woman.

"Smuggling?" Alina's features were serious.

"Listen, perra (bitch)!" Pote's hand went to his belt in the old gesture of drawing his gun. And came out empty: "We are certain you're involved because I spent the night watching the pinche coke and your personal assistant came with a gym bag and took a few bricks. So, you better talk!"

Alina had been preparing her exit because Carlos hadn't sounded happy with the fact that she had been unsuccessful in seducing her target. Her assistant was her real lover and she didn't like the thought that Mendoza and Galvez now knew of her involvement.

Pote raised his hand and Alina cringed: "All right! I don't know much, but what I know is that it's an experimental shipment …for a dealer in Shanghai….who sends pills back!"

"Someone named Wong?" Teresa asked drily. She remembered Castel Fioto mentioning this particular Chinese name.

Alina nodded: "I am getting paid to work on the expansion…and on Valdez. I don't know more!"

"Work on him how?" Pote grumbled.

"Like a woman works on a man! Now are we done?" She assumed a stance ready to go.

"Hardly!" Teresa said through her teeth. "Why use my resort? Is there such activity in the other resorts?"

Alina shook her head to show she didn't intend to speak, as Pote's hand pressed her to sit on the couch.

The woman turned around fast, and her arm hit Pote in the shoulder. It took him a few seconds to register the resistance and then he slapped her hard across the face grumbling: "Just because my face looks like shit doesn't mean I'm letting you off the hook, perra! Talk!"

Alina visibly shook: "Mr. Wong wants territories that belong to the Fioto cartel in southwest Mexico. The Chinese are behind him…I don't know much. I'm on a need-to-know basis!"

"Who knows more? Bustamante?" Teresa said coldly.

"He is Wong's main contact!" Alina's hand touched her burning cheek. Then she glared at Pote, then at Teresa and finally said: "You don't wanna mess with him!"

"And why is that?" Pote grumbled.

"He knows what he does…and he does it well!" She was stumbling.

"Oh…So do we, don't you doubt it!" Pote sounded meaner with every sentence.

"Carlos has a special relationship to you…" She nodded in Pote's direction noticing curiosity on both their faces. "Yes, you personally!"

Teresa's mind jumped back to the name Bustamante, that Pote had recognized, to the information Marcel had given her, and her heart executed a blip: "What relationship?"

Her voice must have sounded stressed and high pitched as both Pote and Alina looked at her startled.

"Carlos Bustamante claims you are his father!" The woman glared at Pote, seeing his face contort as his breathing got shaky.

After a minute of silence as Pote kept sitting on the couch and staring at his feet, Teresa told Alina that her best course of action was to 'get out' with the coke she had stolen last night because The Fioto family was a lot more than a Colombian cartel.

Pote didn't hear anything else that was said, just his good eye registered the woman leaving with two bags and then Teresa shutting the door behind her.

Carlos Bustamante got out of the sports car and ran up the stairs to Alina's apartment. Her text to meet her there 'urgently' had given him a premonition. Then he had regretted being harsh with her for not getting Valdez in bed. After all, Valdez had left; Mendoza had arrived and was making inquiries…and everyone had been upset. So, the plan was working! Maybe he had been too harsh with Alina.

But as the door of the apartment swung open and Teresa Mendoza herself looked him coldly in the eyes, his blood froze with the unexpected scenario.

Then he spotted the man! Pote Galvez, stood close behind her, his one eye swollen shut, his face showing signs of having received more blows. Yes, the family has been successfully unsettled!

Carlos slowly walked in as neither of them moved their eyes off him.

"What is this?" he asked flatly.

"You tell us!" Teresa Mendoza said just as flatly.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Where is Alina?" he said.

"Gone!" Pote said. The man's voice! Carlos tried to keep his composture.

"Alina might not have known who we are, but if you were raised by the Jimenez and are working with the Chinese against Castel Fioto, you know for sure what we have done, and what we are capable of!" Mendoza sounded like someone who was used to talking in front of people.

"If you know that much, then you know who Wong is!" Carlos had not planned for them to have found out these details so soon. Damn Alina!

"What do you want from me? Why is your product in my hotels?" Teresa said coldly.

"It's just convenient!" Carlos lied. Right now, he had no other plan for bringing the coke to Wong but the internal shipping between the hotels. He should have had a plan B, but he had spent so much time devising the details of this one, that he had run out of time!

"The Colombians cannot have the top spot forever!" He was deflecting and Mendoza knew it.

Carlos knew she knew as she said flatly: "You would know I have been out of the game for a long time. And I don't care about the Colombians because I am not one…and because it's none of my business who Wong is and what his beef with Castel Fioto is! I need your product and you out of my hotels in 12 hours before I call Switzerland and request another manager!"

"But you would care if the authorities were to find the product on your premises right now!" Carlos felt anger rising in him as he was being cornered.

"What's your beef with us, cabron?" Pote stepped forward looking at the younger version of himself, sporting the same moustache he had fancied in his younger years. His head was spinning, his hands were literally starting to shake.

"I guess the bitch Alina didn't tell you!" Carlos's voice sounded weak.

"She did!" Pote made one more step in the direction of the young man. "I don't have a son! Why did you tell her such a lie?"

Teresa looked at Pote's red face and heaving chest and the thought that he might explode crossed her mind.

Carlos squinted at Pote, and Pote squinted back. The resemblance was too much for anyone to ignore.

Then the young man said: "My mother was Ximena Bustamante; my grandfather was Claudio Bustamante. All of them killed by Epifanio Vargas's sicarios after my father left them ..and went to work for the United Cartel!"

Pote had caught his chest with his hand and was taking shallow breaths as Teresa found herself by his side and pushed him to sit down on the couch. Then she pulled her cell and dialed emergency in between telling Carlos to 'leave immediately'.

The young man looked around as if wondering what to do and then turned on his heel and left as Teresa kept talking to Pote, holding his hand until the paramedics arrived.

Teresa couldn't believe three days had passed since James had left the hotel where she had asked him for time.

She had pieced the convoluted story together only to uncover a nasty conspiracy dating back to the past of her best associate and friend Pote, who had her heart, but who had made mistakes before and kept making them now.

He was still in the hospital 'under observation' after his little cardiac event; Kelly Anne being securely stationed in the same room.

Teresa's cell buzzed and she saw it was a text from James.

He hadn't contacted her; he had given her 'time'. She hadn't expected anything less of him, and therefore her heart blipped when she opened the message: "Suzie needs her mom. Please go back home."

Where was he? Not at home? If he were at the house, he would have written 'come back' and he had written 'go back'. Carajo!

Teresa's brain was caught in a spin. She had been feeling a distinct urgency to see him as she had been piecing the truth about the events that had transpired and had found proof that Alina had set him up.

She knew that he had flown back to Langebaan, and that he was more than capable of dealing with their 10-year-old daughter Suzie, but somehow the short message felt very troublesome.

After a moment of hesitation, she dialed her niece and waited: "Lena, dear, what is going on at the house?"

Lena Galvez, who was busy training with her horses every single day, didn't spend too much time at the house as the two nannies had assumed the roles of tutors, chefs and care givers to the two younger girls, Suzie Valdez and Lupe Galvez.

"Hi Tia!" Lena's voice rang clear and Teresa could hear her fast breathing as she must have been riding: "I was thinking of calling you…Tio left, packed a bag and left the day before yesterday…Suzie has been crying non stop…He said it was for a little while…but he said he was not coming back to Madagascar to you…and she heard that…and he wouldn't tell her where he went…"

"Did he tell You?" Teresa interrupted her.

"No…What exactly does that mean, Tia?" the girl had turned 20 last year and Teresa knew she had a very good idea what these developments meant.

She squeezed her eyes shut and said: "Tell Suzie I'll be on the next plane home!"